Cable: Blood and Metal #1-2
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Artist: John Romita Jr.
An incoherent mess of a comic that reeks of Liefeld-inspired art and a lack of basic plot or story
Ranking: 1 star
All art mediums undergo what is referred to as a dark age. A dark age can be described as a period of time where the effort and quality put into a work is replaced with gimmicks that solely exist to earn a profit. If there was a dark age for comic books, it would have to be the 1990's. Just to clarify, I did not grow up during the 90's (I wasn't born until 96), so for awhile I couldn't understand why the comics of this decade were so reviled, as some of my all-time favorite comics BATMAN: KNIGHTFALL (my all-time favorite Batman story), THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN, and X-MEN: MUTANT GENESIS were written in this era. After doing more research, I discovered that the comics of the 90's were notorious for bad writing and artwork. This can be attributed to the speculator boom of the 90's, when comics were being sought out for their artwork and value as collectibles, rather than deep characters and story lines. As a result, the majority of the comics produced in the 90's were focused more for their artwork than stories, leading to lazily produced stories that were not only panned for their bad writing, but also for terrible art styles introduced by artist Rob Liefeld. Considered by many to be one of the worst artists in the comic industry, Liefeld's illustrations were infamous for horrendous human anatomy, over usage of shoulder pads and lazer-guns, as well as lacking distinction between characters. The early success of Liefeld's artwork inspired other artists to adopt similar styles, which resulted in the production of countless horrible comics. Still curious if the comics of the 90's were as bad as people claimed them to be, I decided to look into CABLE: BLOOD AND METAL, which is not just a bad comic, but perfectly reflects the horrendous aspects of the 90's to the smallest detail. Explaining what this comic is about is probably impossible, as it's nothing but steroid-enhanced soldiers shooting things, bad artwork, and no plot. The story, or what there is of a story, is centered around the mutant Cable (son of X-Man Cyclops and Madelyn Pryor, who is a much better character in comics like X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX) and his group of mercenaries that look like every character introduced in the 90's. In a confusing introduction, a scene featuring an explosion on the trade center (this came out before 9/11) is suddenly forgotten about by readers as a flashback of Cable's group assaulting a dictatorship in Iran suddenly appears for no apparent reason other than to show off flashy action and poor human anatomy. This mission, along with other assignments that Cable's group took part in at the time are somehow linked to a plot orchestrated by Cable's clone Stryfe in the present. I'm not going waste my time going into further detail about the story as the book attempts at pretending it has plot, but in reality is just a huge mess of over the top action with no plot, and lazily produced artwork. The book continuously cuts between the past and present in an In Medias Res style, but does so without attempting to connect the events of each time period. This causes new plots to randomly appear, leaving previous events unexplained and forgotten by the reader. If book doesn't understand the basic elements of how to form a plot, then why should I bother attempting to summarize a plot for it? The narration of the book is lazily executed, as Cable's narrations act as if it's attempting to be deep, but being unable to connect to Cable's character, they come across as lazy and random. The dialogue is even worse, devoting it's time to overusing cliched one-liners instead of expelling the story or developing the characters, which is where the next problem of the book lies. Right from the start, Cable's group is instantly thrown into action, not giving us any explanation for who any these characters are. All the reader knows about Cable and his group is that they're mutant mercenaries, and that they wear massive shoulder-pads and use high-tech weapons. There's no time set in to develop these characters and give them personalities that we can understand and relate to. I don't know who these people are, and if the writer can't give us a reason to devote are time reading about them, why I should care about what happens to them. Along with that, the characters here aren't very likable. Aside from just shooting laser-guns wildly while spouting out cliched one-liners, these guys have no morals, and make extremely questionable decisions. When they attack the corrupt Iranian government, supposedly they would create a diversion by making it appear that they came to free a group of hostages. How exactly does such a diversion work when they not only blast away at the gov. officials, but also allow the hostages to get caught in the cross-fire? When Cable goes rogue to hunt down Stryfe, a former teammate Cable left for dead, Kane, goes after him. So why after a brawl between the two, does Kane suddenly decide to aid Cable in his hunt for Stryfe? This book doesn't understand what it wants it's characters to be, and therefore, no time is given to develop them or make an impression on the reader. It's a shame that Cable was such a one-dimensional character in this story, as I particularly enjoyed him in X-MEN: MESSIAH COMPLEX, and the only impression I get from him in this story is that he's a violent-happy mercenary without any moral boundaries. While the book wasn't illustrated by Rob Liefeld, his fingerprints are all over it. Every character in this story reflects the cliches of his art style, possessing massive shoulder-pads, laser-guns, and muscles-bound figures that make them look like they were on steroids, which gives no distinction between them. Along with that, the placement of the speech bubbles in this comic is simply atrocious. Much of the time, they are placed on a random area of the page, making it difficult to understand whose speaking them. These two factors only aid in the lack of character development, as since each of the characters look almost exactly alike, the reader can't make a distinction on who is who, or who is saying what. To top off the Liefeldian cliches, the anatomy of the characters (as expected), is extremely in-proportionate. Most of the characters look so muscular that their bones would be crushed by the weight of the muscles, and would have a difficult time even moving (let-alone crazily shooting guns). I like John Romita Jr.'s artwork in other works (particularly JMS's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run), but even his talent couldn't save this comic. I could spend half of this review listing every artistic flaw in this book, but to spare you the pain, I'll just say that I feel sorry for comic fans who had to endure this crappy artwork for a whole decade. It's comics like CABLE: BLOOD AND METAL makes me proud to not have grown up during the 90's, sparing me from this garbage. The story lacks any plot or character development, giving us no reason to connect or feel for the characters, and solely exists to showcase flashy action and horrendously bad artwork. But what makes it worse is that it lacks originality, as countless comics produced in the 90's followed this same formula. Not having grown up the 90's, it would be unfair of me to claim that all comics of the decade were repeats of the same garbage, but it would not surprise me if it were true. Based on what I've researched, the majority of characters created in the 90's were basically the same. They might have had different names, but they'd be no different from every other one-dimensional, muscle bound, laser-gun shooting freak of the era. I feel that every thing wrong with comics produced in the 1990's can be reflected through CABLE: BLOOD AND METAL, and it will always astonish me that major comic producers were willing to sacrifice great stories and characters, and promote violence and bad artwork for an entire decade. Having read this travesty of a comic, I feel sorry for readers who were forced to endure reading this crap, and I'm glad that I never had to. "Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage." -Mason Cooley
